1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to processing systems that handle citations to authorities. In particular, this disclosure relates to a citation processing system that parses, error checks, and corrects citations, and that automatically transforms citations that adhere to one citation system to meet the requirements of another citation system.
2. Related Art
Citations to legal and nonlegal materials are typically found in legal writings of all sorts, including filings with a court or government agency, papers in scholarly journals, law student assignments, articles in legal periodicals and other publications. These citations must conform to specific rules established by the citation system adopted by the authority to which they are submitted. Examples of citation systems include the systems described in The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, ALWD Citation Manual: A Professional System of Citation, local court rules, and citation requirements for specific publications such as legal journals or periodicals.
The rules of the various citations systems may be quite complex. For example, rule 2.1(f) in the 18th edition of the Bluebook describes which commas must and must not be italicized, rule 5.1(a) describes substantially different treatment for quotations that are 49 words long compared with quotations that are 50 words long, and rule 13.7(c) describes how it interacts with rule 4.1(a) to determine the presentation of a footnote that appears within five footnotes of another footnote to the same source but not within a filing to a court.
Even within a single citation system, the rules may be inconsistent from one use to another. For example, the Introduction section in the 18th edition of The Bluebook notes that there are different conventions for writing materials for a court versus using exactly the same materials for a law review article, and in fact the differences are substantial. As another example, the third edition of the ALWD manual notes substantial differences between the formats for court filings in Colorado compared with filings in Michigan. Even within a single citation system in a single jurisdiction, the rules may be inconsistent. There may be different rules of citation as a case goes from a trial court to an appellate court to a court of final decision, or when a case is removed from state court to federal court. The rules in the same citation system also become inconsistent over time. For example, the Preface to the 18th edition of the Bluebook lists two pages of changes from the 17th edition, so writing that conforms to the rules in the 17th edition of the Bluebook might not conform to the 16th or 18th editions.
Therefore, there has long been a need for a citation processing system that parses, error checks, and corrects citations, and that correctly transforms citations between the requirements of widely varying citation systems without burdening the author of a document with the extreme complexity and inconsistencies of the citation systems.